Week in Photos

A man climbs on big chunks of melting ice on the Danube River in Belgrade. The thick ice, which had closed hundreds of miles of Europe’s busy waterway during the region’s recent cold snap, started moving because of rising temperatures.

AFP/Getty Images

A clown looks out of a window during the traditional Carnival parade in Cologne, western Germany.

AP Photo

A Hindu holy man smokes marijuana during Mahashivratri festival celebrations in the courtyard of Pashupatinath Temple in Katmandu, Nepal.

AP Photo

A child stands with his father as they wait to receive blankets and winter jackets from Welthungerhilfe, a German NGO, during a snow fall at a camp for internally displaced Afghans in Kabul, Afghanistan. More than 40 people, most of them children, have frozen to death in what has been Afghanistan’s coldest winter in years.

AP Photo

Policemen and villagers use sticks and grass cutters to destroy a poppy field above the village of Tar-Pu, in the mountains of Shan State. Myanmar has dramatically escalated its poppy eradication efforts since September 2011, threatening the livelihoods of impoverished farmers who depend upon opium as a cash crop to buy food. With new ceasefires ending years of conflict between the government and ethnic insurgents, Myanmar police and United Nations officials are travelling through opium-rich Shan State to ask farmers what assistance they need.

REUTERS

Thai police officers escort Iranian bomb suspect Mohammad Kharzei, center, during an investigation at his rented house in Bangkok.

AFP/Getty Images

A US Marine honor guard stands with the casket of Lance Cpl. Osbrany Montes De Oca before funeral services in North Arlington, NJ. Montes De Oca, 20, was killed Feb. 10 in the Helmand province of Afghanistan 10 days after having been promoted. Family members say Montes De Oca had joined the Marine Corps with his twin brother Osmany in December 2010.

AP Photo

An Indian girl performs acrobatics on a rope during Mahashivratri festival celebrations at Bhavnath temple in Junagadh, India. Hindus across the world are celebrating Mahashivratri or Shiva’s night festival.

AP Photo

Two Jordanian men walk on the sidewalk in foggy and rainy weather in Amman, Jordan.

AP Photo

Cadets join a military parade during graduation ceremony from military colleges in Tripoli, Libya.

EPA

Models walk the runway during the Pam Hogg Fashion Show during London Fashion Week.

Two people cuddle on a bench in Union Square in New York. After an unusually mild winter, New Yorkers are enjoying the return of spring weather.

REUTERS

A man gestures as pigeons fly over him in Idlib, northwestern Syria, near the Turkish border.

AFP/Getty Images

The setting sun hits Horsetail Fall at just the right angle to light it up as if it’s on fire, in Yosemite Calif. This natural phenomena occurs for just two weeks in February and is reminiscent of the old firefall of burning embers that park employees pushed over Glacier Point to entertain guests until 1968.

AP Photo

‘Gilles of Binche’ dance during a Carnival parade in the city center of Binche, Belgium. The Carnival of Binche dates back to around the 14th Century, with the clown-like Gilles performing their traditional dances to the sound of drums to ward off evil spirits with their sticks.

AP Photo

A Bangladeshi decorates the Shaheed Minar, or martyrs mausoleum, on International Mother Language Day in Dhaka, Bangladesh. International Mother Language Day is observed in commemoration of the movement where a number of students died in 1952, defending the recognition of Bangla as a state language of the former East Pakistan, now Bangladesh.

AP Photo

Clothing, lying in heaps at the site of a neighborhood destroyed by the tsunami, is piled up by clearing crew in Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, northern Japan. Cleanup continues to remove the debris left by the March 11, 2011 tsunami and separate it according to material or category such as clothing, steel, wood, cars, tires and personal items.

AP Photo

Julio Edwin Valdez is escorted by national police officers as he is presented to the press at police headquarters in La Paz, Bolivia. Valdez, who was arrested on Feb. 14, is the alleged leader of a gang suspected of tricking commuters into buses pretending to be public transportation who would then rob and kill them during pre-dawn hours in El Alto. The gang is accused of killing dozens of people within the last year, according to authorities.

AP Photo

A competitor flips her pancake as she runs towards the finish line during the annual Washington National Cathedral Pancake Race in Washington, DC.

AFP/Getty Images

A man walks past tires set on fire by followers of a southern separatist group, calling for a boycott to Yemen’s presidential elections, to block a road in the southern port city of Aden.

REUTERS

Former slave Jose Fabio Lucas de Lima poses at the construction site of the Arena Pantanal stadium in Cuiaba, Mato Grosso state. A total of 25 men are working at the site of one of Brazil’s new World Cup soccer stadiums, who, in their previous jobs, worked in conditions that were classified as slave labor by the Brazilian government. They are now helping to build the stadium in the western city of Cuiaba as part of a state-sponsored program that trains former “slaves” in skills like carpentry and helps insert them into the regular workforce.

REUTERS

Pakistani women sit near the bow of a boat as they cross a river in Lahore.

AFP/Getty Images

Chandra Bahadur Dangi, a 72-year-old Nepali who claims to be the world’s shortest man at 22 inches high, walks near his home in Nepal. Dangi will go to Kathmandu as Guinness World Records experts are due to arrive in Nepal to measure him.

AFP/Getty Images

Fire brigade, security personnel and locals douse a fire that engulfed a house belonging to resident Tulshi Maiya Joshi at the residential area of Balkumari, Ashon in Kathmandu. According to local media reports, the fire was started by a short-circuit at around 7:00 am, and took three hours for the rescue team to control the fire. No human casualties were reported in the incident.

REUTERS

Jonathan Walker, left, and Anson Carter with the Memphis Zoo give a Carnotaurus a ride to his new home at the new animatronic dinosaur exhibit in Memphis, Tenn.

AP Photo

Great Britain’s Christopher Mears, top, and Nicholas Robinson Baker compete during the Men’s Synchronised 3m Springboard Final at the FINA Diving World Cup at the Olympic Aquatic Centre in east London.

AFP/Getty Images

Afghan demonstrators show copies of Koran books allegedly set on fire by US soldiers during a protest against Koran desecration at the gate of Bagram airbase at Bagram north of Kabul.

AFP/Getty Images

A version of “The Scream,” one of the world’s most famous paintings and an iconic image of despair, is expected to top $80 million when it goes on sale in May.

AFP/Getty Images

A 12.76 carat pink diamond, the largest of the rare and precious stones ever found in Australia, is seen in Perth. Named the Argyle Pink Jubilee, the rough stone was found at Rio’s pink diamond operations in the Kimberley region of western Australia and would take 10 days to cut and polish.

AFP/Getty Images

A sculpture of Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy burns in a bonfire during Carnival celebrations in Vigo, in northwestern Spain.

AFP/Getty Images

Afghan protesters throw rocks at a water canon near a U.S. military base in Kabul. Several people were wounded when shots were fired during violent clashes after copies of the Koran, Islam’s holy book, were allegedly burned at NATO’s main base in Afghanistan.

REUTERS

Cardinal Timothy Dolan puts his hand on a man’s head while handing out food to the hungry at St. Francis of Assisi Church in New York. Over the weekend Dolan was elevated from archbishop to cardinal in a ceremony at the Vatican.

AP Photo

Gulls fly across the harbor in Lake Lucerne, Switzerland.

AP Photo

A man dressed as a Stormtrooper walks on Copacabana beach during carnival celebrations in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

AP Photo

Indian Christians pray during a mass in observance of Ash Wednesday at a Catholic church in Hyderabad, India.

AP Photo

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama greets a devotee after leading a prayer session on the first day of the Tibetan New Year at the Tsuglakhang temple in Dharmsala, India.

AP Photo

Women in ancient dresses take part in the 2,600th anniversary celebrations of Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, Myanmar.

AP Photo

A man falls off his horse during the two-day Pasola war festival in the remote Kodi Pangedo village of the Indonesian West Sumba province. Pasola is a ritual to ask the blessings of the gods for a good harvest for the year.

REUTERS

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visits the Korean People’s Army Unit 842 in an undisclosed location near Pyongyang, North Korea.

REUTERS

Statues of Buddhist monks are lined up near a temple in Payathonzu, near the Burmese border with Thailand.

REUTERS

A model presents a creation from the John Richmond 2012 Autumn/Winter collection during Milan Fashion Week.

REUTERS

An injured passenger is lifted from the wreckage by firefighters in Buenos Aires, Argentina, after a train accident in Once train station. The city emergency service confirmed 600 injured so far and at least 49 fatal casualties when a suburban train failed to break and ran into the buffers at the railway terminal.

EPA

Workers work on the top of a 557-foot-tall tower of a multi-span cable-stayed bridge amidst heavy fog in Shaoxing, China. The six-mile-long bridge across the mouth of Qiantang River will carry an eight-lane expressway between Jiaxing and Shaoxing when completed.

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Pro-choice advocate Margaret Doyle from Richmond, Va. is removed by Capitol police from the General Assembly Building in Richmond after HB1, the bill that states human life begins at conception, passed the Senate Education and Health committee. Eight Republicans voted for the measure, and the committee’s seven Democrats opposed it after an hour-long hearing on the bill that is similar to one in Missouri.

AP Photo

An employee directs job seekers to line up outside the Foxconn recruitment center in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China.

REUTERS

The newly-unveiled sculpture by artist duo Michael Elmgreen, of Denmark, and Ingar Dragset, of Norway, is seen on the Fourth Plinth in central London’s Trafalgar Square.

A barber uses a shaver to clean the eyelid of his customer, as a part of his hair shaving service, at a residential area in Suining, Sichuan province.

REUTERS

Indian National Security Guard (NSG) commandos display their skills as they take part in a rope exercise during the inauguration ceremony of their regional hub in Mumbai.

REUTERS

Children play with a ball during a flood near their house in Jakarta.

REUTERS

A man walks past the remains of a vehicle used in a bomb attack in Kirkuk, north of Baghdad. Two car bombs exploded in a quick succession in different districts wounding 20 people, including 15 policemen, in Kirkuk.

REUTERS

The body of a victim, retrieved from the Costa Concordia cruise ship is lifted to a helicopter during the operations to bring up four bodies from the wreck at Giglio island.

REUTERS

Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, gestures as he speaks during an IFAD Annual Governing Council in Rome.

Reuters

A man balances on a fence post as he watches the sun set over the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica, Calif.

REUTERS

Three thousand students from Baekseok University make the shape of a drop of blood at a ski resort in Pyeongchang east of Seoul. The Korean National Red Cross and the university held the event for a campaign to encourage blood donation, and plan to apply for a listing for the “World’s largest blood drop” by Guinness World Records.

REUTERS

A satellite image shows a pipeline fire in Homs, Syria. The pipeline, which runs through the rebel-held neighborhood of Baba Amr had been shelled by regime troops for the previous 12 days, according to two activist groups, the Local Coordination Committees and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The state news agency, SANA, blamed “armed terrorists” for the pipeline attack last week. It said the pipeline feeds the tankers in the Damascus suburb of Adra, which contribute in supplying gasoline to the capital and southern regions.

AP Photo

A Tibetan child monk stands at a monastery during the third day of “Losar,” or Tibetan New Year, at Baudhanath Stupa in Katmandu, Nepal.

AP Photo

Smoke rises from the Italian cargo vessel Enrica Lexie anchored at the Cochin Oil Terminal as the sun sets at the port in Kochi, India.

AP Photo

Destroyed buildings are seen at the chemical plant after an explosion in Jiangbei District of Chongqing, southwest China.

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Pakistani policemen take position during a militant attack on a police station in Peshawar. Four policemen were killed when suicide bombers blew themselves up in an attack on a police station in northwest Pakistan. The three attackers, armed with hand grenades, also wounded four other policemen in the assault on the station.

AFP/Getty Images

Indonesian soldiers patrol around Kerobokan prison in Denpasar, Indonesia’s resort island of Bali on the third day of rioting. Foreign inmates evacuated from Kerobokan prison where rioting prisoners seized control this week have been returned to the jail at their request.

AFP/Getty Images

A Kashmiri Muslim woman prays at the entrance of the shrine of Sufi Saint Syed Abdul Qadir Jilani, in Srinagar, India.

AP Photo

Iranian police officers perform pray at the Tehran University campus in Iran.

AP Photo

A girl crosses a stone bridge in Seoul, South Korea.

AP Photo

Syrian Tarek el Khatib, demonstrates his strength as he waits for a taxi to drive over him at Tahrir Square, the focal point of the Egyptian uprising, in Cairo, Egypt. Tarek’s show is to draw attention to the situation in Syria.

AP Photo

The Silene stenophylla, considered as the oldest plant ever to be regenerated, is seen at a laboratory of the Institute of Cell Biophysics under the Russian Academy Of Sciences in the town of Pushchino, some 62 miles south of Moscow. The seeds of an extant species of a flowering plant, also known as the narrow-leafed campion, were found by Russian scientists on the banks of the Kolyma River in Siberia in an Ice Age ground-squirrel’s burrow containing fruit and seeds that had been stuck in the permafrost for about 30,000 years. The permafrost, which serves as a natural depository for ancient life forms, may help researchers and scientists with their future experiments to revive other species.

REUTERS

General view of destroyed homes near the Acre river in Brasileia, a Brazilian town sharing a border with the Bolivian city of Cobija. Heavy rains in the region caused flooding in Cobija and Brasileia.

REUTERS

The Jamesburg Earth Station is seen in Cachagua Valley, near Carmel, California. The earth station, which helped bring Apollo 11’s first images from the moon, was an important link for the nation’s television, telephone and military networks from 1968 to 2002. Current owner Jeff Bullis, a Silicon Valley businessman, is selling the 97-foot satellite receiver and a 21,718-square-foot, bunker-like support building on 161 acres of land for close to $3 million.

REUTERS

People take to the beach in Nice, southern France. Temperatures reached Friday an unusual 62 F with a water temperature of 55 F at the resort town.

EPA

An honor guard soldier stands during a ceremony at a Jewish cemetery in Bucharest, Romania, next to a monument bearing the names of Jews killed 70 years ago when the SS Struma, the ship they were on as refugees on the way to Palestine, was sunk by a Soviet torpedo in the Black Sea leading to the death of all but one of the 779 people on board.

AP Photo

Residents cross the famous U Bein’s bridge on Taungthaman lake during sunset outside Myanmar’s northern city of Mandalay. U Bein’s bridge is the world longest and oldest teak bridge stretching close to 1.2 kilometers across the Taungthaman lake.

AFP/Getty Images

A dancer performs during the parade of Beija-Flor de Nilopolis samba school in at Marques de Sapucai sambodrome, in Rio de Janeiro.